Apartment dwellers and condo owners could soon be free of exclusive cable …

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Why wait for a boring FCC meeting that no one will watch to announce a major policy, when you can talk to a New York Times reporter instead? Days before the official FCC meeting at which the issue will be discussed, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has just told the newspaper that his agency is ready to strike down the exclusive contracts that cable operators have signed with apartment managers and homeowners' associations across the country.

If you're one of the millions of Americans who lives in a multiunit dwelling (MDU), there's a good chance that your rent or association fees pay for a TV service you may or may not want. Many such units are locked up in exclusive contracts that don't allow condo owners to install, say, a Verizon FiOS fiber optic link instead of a Comcast connection.

Martin's comments indicate that the FCC is serious about ending such contracts and may actually attempt to throw out current contracts before they expire. The very idea has cable operators incensed.

To consumers, the ability to choose sounds great, though in practice the choices available may be limited. The big backers of the change have been phone companies like AT&T and Verizon, which (not coincidentally) have launched television services of their own. With nearly a quarter of Americans living in MDUs, missing out on this market could be a huge blow to telco expansion plans.

Despite worries that new FiOS and U-Verse installs might target only wealthy areas, several people I've spoken with on the issue say it's really more about density. Costs for new fiber runs to less-dense housing can be astronomical, and MDUs are about the densest form of housing to be found. For companies struggling to justify massive capital expenditures on an entirely new business, being able to wire MDU residents could be a big boon.

Cable operators argue that such MDU contracts can actually lower rates by allowing people to pool their purchasing power and strike better deals, but as Martin told the Times, "Exclusive contracts have been one of the most significant barriers to competition." He also claimed that cable rates have risen nearly 100 percent in the last 10 years.

The FCC has pushed hard to change the playing field so that the telcos can compete in video. Last year, it made it more difficult for local municipalities to place build-out requirements on the telcos, and it gave cities only 90 days to act on new applications for video service. Whether this is pro-consumer or simply pro-telco is a matter of perspective.

Martin argues that costs drop whenever the cable companies face competition, and he would rather see at least some competition with low build-out thresholds than no competition with high build-outs. AT&T has been especially intransigent on this point, telling cities repeatedly that it would not deploy U-Verse with high build-out requirements in place.